How much can you lift? Military Sealift Command takes lessons from Iran war

Rear Admiral Nicholson, I'm glad to have you here at Sea Air Space 2026

Obviously wanted to go into what you're seeing some at the show itself first and what some of the displays or just the themes that you're noticing that tie into Military Sealift Command's current mission and the future of the command itself

Thanks, J.D. It's really great to be here at Sea Air and Space this year. One of the things that's kind of unique, I think, this year, maybe between as opposed to years in the past, is the Maritime Action Plan and the big focus on the maritime industry writ large, which is not just the Navy and defense side, but also just commercial shipping

MSC straddles both sides of that industry. So we have a foot in the commercial side with some, in some cases, how our ships are designed and built

And also with our civil service mariners or SIVMARS that crew a number of our ships

And then we also have a foot in the defense side because we do run the Grey Hull Combat Logistics Force that directly supports a fleet, resupplying the fleet with what's going on

Excellent. Now, you mentioned combat logistics. We obviously seeing that play out in real time in CENTCOM and you know some elements in Southcom and just operations in Latin America and the renewed emphasis there Touching on Iran first I mean can you talk I mean maybe you know broad brush but like a little bit of the challenges that the Sea Left Command is encountering right now and just the difficulty or the nature of the

conflict itself and the uniqueness of it and what that's requiring for those sailors bringing those

supplies to the fight? Sure. Great question, because I think things are happening now in

this conflict that are a little different than we've seen in many, many decades. So if you think

back in the last several decades, the conflicts that we've had, typically either short or they're

long and sustained, but there were supply routes that were uncontested and easy to get through

either land or air or whatnot. What we're seeing in today's conflict is a different scenario where

it's requiring very long sea lines of communication to get the material, to get the supplies, to get

the various things that the fleet needs to operate. Unfortunately, we're pretty darn good at this

and we haven't forgotten our routes and how to do this and how to go very long distances with

supplies, and we've been able to do this. We keep the fleet supplied through our Combat Logistics

force. And that is something we've been very good at over the years and something we practice

in the war games and everything else we do However what a little different this time is how do you resupply the suppliers And that what going on right now And that what my team works very hard on

is that bulk logistics that comes from various different places in the theater or from the

United States that gets to the combat logistics force, and then they go forward and resupply the

fleet. That's something we really haven't practiced or done quite a bit of in quite some time

But we're up on the governor. It took us a little bit to get up on step, but we're there right now

And I think that's going very, very well. And part of the endeavor right now is just a sheer scale of what we're seeing

Obviously, we have the carrier strike groups there. The Marine Expeditionary Units are there with the Boxer, Tripoli

You know, what just on a kind of rudimentary level, what does that entail

getting those elements resupplied with thousands of personnel and equipment and fuel and food and all these things

How is that unfolding for your command in real time? And what does that look like

I mean, maybe in the weeks ahead or how is this influencing future conflicts and strategy around that

Yeah, fantastic. What we doing is that is a lot of people and a lot of machinery that needs a lot of fuel and a whole bunch of food right And so that what we and all of the ammunition and everything else repair parts and everything else that goes along with it all of the different various things that we resupply So this is something that we been

really focused on in military sea lift command for a long time. We, with our gray hauled ships

our combat logistics force, we do the last tactical mile. So those ships pull alongside

They do an underweight replenishment and they do a vertical replenishment or combination of both

And it's massive amounts of fuel that are being delivered, massive amounts of food and parts and everything else that needs to go to it

Very large sums of ammunition as well, too. What we are doing, which is a little different than before, was we're looking at how to get that bulk fuel into the theater on a regular basis so that large tankers can come in

They can refill our combat logistics force and then bring it forward. large supply ships bringing the food and all of the other supplies that are going on

And that's what's really happening now. It is a process now that in the past may have been directly from the Combat Logistics Force ship

that gets the fuel, that gets the food, it gets these sort of things at a logistics hub

and then brings it to the fleet. Now we're also focused on resupplying the logistics hub to get it to the fleet

And in some cases, we can skip the logistics hubs altogether because of some things that have happened in the last several years